Friday, December 13, 2013

Blog 13: Advice to New Tutors

Any
advice I would give to new tutors would need to be included with this important disclaimer: I am not an expert
writing tutor. I have only been here for a short time, so my knowledge and
experience is not nearly as good as that of a master tutor who has been working
as a writing tutor for years and years. That would be my first piece of advice –
watch and learn from the masters. The master tutors have been in difficult
tutoring sessions and know how to handle them gracefully and professionally.
Also, learn to relax. If this tutoring session doesn’t go well, take it as a
learning experience, and move on to the next student. Each tutoring session is
a fresh start. Any bad feelings created during one session should be erased so
that your next victim-(*cough) student feels welcome and that they are in a
safe place to ask questions and learn. Show the student that you care by
listening to their concerns. Empathize with them, but keep the session on task.
Try to befriend them so that they feel you are trying to help them, not judge
them. Realize that there will be tutees who are at different levels of writing
competency, and that you should never make them feel belittled by emphasizing the
gap between their ability and yours. Praise their strengths to increase their
confidence, but don’t be afraid to gently point out their mistakes or make
suggestions for improvement. Remember that this is their paper, not yours. You
are not supposed to be co-author of the paper, so keep your ideas and your
writing to minimum. Have the student come up with as much of the ideas as they
can. If you fix the paper for them now, they will learn to rely on having
someone else edit their papers rather than learning to catch their mistakes for
themselves.